


Chains

by Aeriel



Category: Lion in Winter
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeriel/pseuds/Aeriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alais grows up, Eleanor grows old. It's hard being a woman in a man's world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meltha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/gifts).



> According to the historical record, Eleanor was imprisoned when Alais was twelve, a year before Geoffrey lead a (failed) rebellion against Henry. When Alais was sixteen, Rosamund Clifford died.  
> Anachronisms are present here as in the play and film.

_\-- “If I decided to be trouble, Henry, how much trouble could I be?” --_

When she was little, Alais dreamed of being queen. As she grew up, it was the last dream to die.

She was just old enough to realize that the royal family of England did not function in a way that could be considered normal. Henry and Eleanor baffled her completely, but she couldn’t help loving them.

She loved Eleanor first. Henry barely looked at her until she turned thirteen, but she didn’t mind, because Queen Eleanor used to coddle her. She had forgotten daughters, she used to say, but no one could accuse her of forgetting Alais.

John used to tease her and Richard patronized her when he deigned to speak to her at all, but Geoffrey wasn’t so bad. He sometimes tried to teach her to read, even if he frequently grew impatient with her slow progress. It was just as well she liked Geoffrey—whenever Eleanor wanted to spend time with Richard, she told Alais to ‘go play with Geoffrey or John’. Alais certainly wasn’t going to play with _John_.

“I hate you,” she said spitefully to John once, when she was eleven and he was five.

John appeared unaffected. “Father loves me,” he sniffed. “That’s all that matters. You’re just Richard’s wife.”

Alais stamped her foot furiously. “I don’t have to marry Richard if I don’t want to! Eleanor loves _me_ , and if I say I want to marry… the pig-keeper… then I can!”

“Why would you _want_ to marry the pig-keeper?” John stared at her.

“I don’t know,” Alais shrugged. “I don’t _want_ to marry anybody, but the pig-keeper would at least pay attention to me.”

“Richard’s a war hero,” John pointed out.

“So?”

John shook his head and walked away. “ _Girls_ ,” she fancied she heard him mutter.

Later, Geoffrey said nonchalantly to her that Henry might not want to be married to Eleanor anymore.

Alais gaped at him. “But why?!”

“Haven’t you seen the way he looked at Rosamund Clifford?”

She scowled. “Everybody knows the king loves Rosamund Clifford. Why should that have anything to do with Eleanor?”

Geoffrey only laughed.

 _\-- “May I watch you kiss her? I watch you every night. I conjure it before I sleep.”--_

If Eleanor had known in 1169 that the sweet little girl child she had kissed on the forehead and tucked into bed would grow up to warm the king’s bed, she would have suffocated Alais in her sleep.

The Queen hated Rosamund Clifford, not with a passion, but with a cool fury that froze her veins. She rarely saw the woman, but when she did, no one could say she treated her with anything other than common courtesy. Rosamund was another lady—if not quite Eleanor’s equal, then at least only a step or two below.

Alais was another matter entirely. Alais would never be anything but a child in Eleanor’s eyes—a child practically plucked from Eleanor’s own womb, at that. When she received word of Henry’s latest mistress, the thought crossed her mind that the same might have happened had she remained Louis’ wife and borne him sons.

A strange thought, she mused, a world in which she was not Henry’s wife. It called to mind memories practically prehistoric in nature. In such a world perhaps Henry Plantaganet would have only been to her a signature on paper. Perhaps it would have been her very own Alix in bed with the English king: Henry, the pervert across the Channel.

That made her laugh.

Men could sling insults at her, many of them true, or at least based in truth, but no one could accuse her of satisfying her salacious appetites with little boys.

Richard probably had. Lord knew his father had, on campaign, along with any unclaimed woman passing by.

She should have seen it coming, really. One pretty girl in a castle full of big scary men: why, the only way for poor Alais to feel safe would have to be in the arms of the biggest, scariest old man.

And Henry was an old man, as surely as Eleanor was now an old woman. That made her smile, or at least curl up the edges of her leathery old mouth above her cracked old teeth. Women would no longer cleave to Henry for his good looks, or his charming smile. His bed was fit only for whores now, and whores perform their services for a price.

 _\-- “Were you always like this? Years ago, when I was young and worshiped you, is this what you were like?”--_

Eleanor wasn’t there when Alais needed her most. She had gotten herself imprisoned for leading some sort of rebellion Alais didn’t understand—there always seemed to be rebellions, but nothing ever changed, so she had adopted a strict policy of not learning about politics—but all that meant was that Eleanor had left her. Eleanor didn’t love her.

So when Alais was lonely and confused and couldn’t sleep, it was Henry who comforted her.

She didn’t understand what Henry could want with her, at first. He had started paying attention to her after Eleanor left, but not with any particular intensity until Rosamund died. Then he would come to her room at night and sit on the edge of her bed, and ask her to sing to him. Alais sang until her voice was hoarse, and then he left, each night.

Geoffrey began sneering at her when she walked past. “How is the king’s precious pet?”

Alais would protest, would be stubborn, would stalk off in a helpless fury. She _knew_ what Geoffrey was insinuating, and she knew she couldn’t prove he was wrong. Since there weren’t any other women of her station left in the castle, there was no one else in her bedroom to witness the king’s good behavior.

By the time Henry actually began a physical relationship with her, she had stopped talking to Geoffrey altogether, let alone John. It wasn’t worth it.

Alais had actually thought he meant to have her the first night he came to her room, and was almost disappointed when he left. His visible loneliness was strangely compelling, especially since he took no liberties with her.

She was sure he wanted her, though, sure as she was that Geoffrey wanted her. But she knew Geoffrey, and if she became his lover, she would be putting herself in his power forever, and Richard would never marry her, and Henry would despise her. If she became Henry’s lover… he was the king. She was at his mercy already—her status would not change.

The same night that she said, “You can stay, if you like. It must be awfully cold in your bed alone, and I’m warm,” was the night she lost her maidenhead.

“I’m not clever,” she said to Henry in bed one night, when she was twenty. “Not like you and Geoffrey, or the others. Does it bother you?”

“Why on earth should it bother me?” Henry grumbled. “I’ve got a castle’s worth of clever people, do you think I need any more? Clever means treacherous. I want no treachery in my bed.”

 _\-- “In fact, I wonder, Henry, if I care for anything. I wonder if I’m hungry out of habit and if all my lusts, like passions in a poem, aren’t really recollections.”--_

 

By God, Eleanor thought, she was too old for this. She had suffered Henry’s infidelities for thirty-one years, what was another women?

Of course before, she still had proof that Henry cared what she thought of him. She always found out about his liaisons from other sources- until Rosamund. That was when he actively began to avoid her bed.

“There’s no room for me!” he snarled, when she confronted him. “Not next to precious little Richard!”

“Richard wouldn’t need a mother to reassure him if he had a father to emulate.”

A queen never stooped to asking what virtues the king’s mistress possessed that she did not. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know already. On the few occasions that Eleanor had been in close quarters with the royal bed-warmer, she had observed Rosamund to be serene, agreeable, and, of course, musically gifted.

After years of fighting, Eleanor could understand the charm of a sweet mouth that always said yes. The Alais that Eleanor remembered would have been a poor substitute. Perhaps she would claw Henry’s eyes out and run off with the pig-keeper.

She had seen Henry kiss Rosamund once, from a distance, before refusing to so much as lodge in the same residence. It had happened very slowly, almost as if in a dream.

Eleanor was pregnant with John at the time. She had actually been pregnant when she first heard that Henry was actually bringing a mistress to court, and had initially thought it was a harmless whim to keep him occupied in the months until she was due.

Later the queen had to wonder if pregnancy impaired her judgment or if she had just not wanted to believe that Henry was in love.

She could scarcely remember the actual visual now: time had happily eroded that particular memory for Eleanor. Of course, in her gilded prison, she had nothing else to while the hours away with but her fading recollections.

Henry didn’t—hadn’t-- kissed her that way. He had never treated her so gently. Not that Eleanor required delicate handling, or had ever thought she wanted it.

But _God!_ she could see the difference from her window. As a young girl she would have mistaken it for weakness, but…

Surely he didn’t kiss Alais that way. Of course not—likely he threw her onto the bed and mauled her while poor Alais squeezed her eyes shut and waited for it to be over. Then afterwards she asked her favors and he granted them.

That was how Eleanor pictured his usual affairs. Of course, his usual affairs didn’t last seven years.

Henry had loved Rosamund, but she was dead, and Eleanor was very much alive. Eleanor was his wife, his queen, and Alais knew it. Sometime soon, Eleanor would be let out again, and Alais would have to see her. Unlike Rosamund, Alais had reason to fear her.

 _\--“Oh, eat each other up for all I care. I’m an orphan and I’ll never have a husband and my lover’s wife has fangs for teeth and everybody’s going to die.”--_


End file.
